The Oakland Urban Villages Project

Cities like Oakland are approaching an era of new challenges, including meeting energy and transportation needs in a time of growing energy constraints, reshaping the built environment to fit a renewable energy future, relocalizing the economy through sustainable business and industries, and increasing food security through community supported agriculture programs and local farmers’ markets.

To be successful, the sustainable, less energy dependent and more ecologically healthy Oakland of the future will need to become less like a blanket of development accessed by cars and more like a network of walkable “urban villages”— linked by transit and connected to a strong downtown center, with more room for urban agriculture, creek corridors and greenways.

The Oakland Urban Villages Project combines science and technology with community education, outreach and input to describe, communicate, and achieve a shared vision for a just and sustainable city, a model city inspired, perhaps, by the other great model city, Curitiba, Brazil.

Project Goals:

·      To design an evolving map that communicates a shared vision for a sustainable Oakland, a model city of the likes of Curitiba, Brazil but taking steps even beyond that excellent model. 

·      To support and enhance Oakland’s long-range sustainability targets and timelines. 

·      To increase effectiveness of current and future land use planning and sustainable development initiatives that lie at the foundation of energy, land conservation and climate change issues

·      To provide input and support to Mayor Dellums’ housing initiative.

 Project Initiatives:

·      GIS based Oakland Green City Map.  The base map was executed in 2006 with graduate students from the University of California’s Department of City and Regional Planning and now needs refining in community meetings and workshops.

·      Green City Workshops: Community education, outreach, input

·      Urban Villages long range conceptual plans for Oakland districts

·      Project GO! (Green Oakland): Zero Carbon/Zero Waste development project launch

What We’ve Done So Far

Working with a team of doctoral candidates studying city and regional planning at the University of California, Berkeley, we created a preliminary base map for Oakland in order to (1) identify existing centers of concentrated social, cultural, and economic activity, and to (2) understand how they are related to topography, water systems, and the transportation network. A series of twenty-one data layers in the categories of natural features, land uses, infrastructure, and demographics were gathered. We used the base map to do some initial analysis of the city’s built infrasturce and its relationship to the environment as well as to existing and potential new centers of economic and social vitality.

Next Steps and Outcomes: Sustainable Urban Villages Project, with funding from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District

Sustainable Urban Villages – Oakland Pilot

Project Description

EcoCity Builders (ECB), and its two significant project partners, Oakland Community Action Network (OCAN) and Western Institute for Social Research (WISR), Berkeley, will work closely together with various departments within the City of Oakland, as well as community stakeholders, to develop a Sustainable Urban Villages – Oakland Pilot (SUV-OP) action plan that incorporates several objectives of the Bay Area Climate Protection Grant Program for innovative long-term solutions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions regionally. We will also interact with the City of Richmond and community organizations to develop a prototype for that location during Phase 3 of the project, building upon work already underway in Richmond.

The Urban Villages model is based on the premise that in order to achieve long-term sustainability a comprehensive and integrated approach is needed. Based on an evolving integrated and interactive ECB-previously-developed GIS mapping system, the project will describe a model for the transition of the San Francisco Bay Area’s currently energy and land intensive built environment into a new regional vision of economically, environmentally and socially healthy “urban villages” of various sizes and characters, powered largely by clean, renewable energy and linked primarily through walking, public transit, greenways, trails and natural corridors. The model can be adapted to other Bay Area cities to meet the following goals: greenhouse gas emissions and carbon footprint reduction, climate protection, sustainable development, environmental quality, economic stability, job creation, crime reduction and poverty alleviation among other co-benefits.

Typically, an Urban Village community plan is anchored by a vitality and needs assessment and inventory and supported by the City’s general plan policies and zoning, economic (re)development strategies, and in coordination with local and regional land use and transportation agencies. Complete integration of the Urban Villages concept would occur through each City’s adoption of proposed land use framework along with specific action plans for each Urban Village community within a particular City. For example, the SUV-OP plans will be crafted through a collaborative community process utilizing the City of Oakland’s resident-driven Neighborhood Crime Prevention Council and Neighborhood Watch infrastructure, already in place, augmented with outreach to faith communities, non profit organizations, labor and other neighborhood organizations. The Oakland Pilot will be launched in a highly-impacted area.

The SUV-OP project combines the philosophy, mission, vision and goals of its three main partners, with a highly-qualified and technically-capable, multidisciplinary expert team to ensure project success.  We believe that through careful land use planning and participatory community engagement processes, sustainable communities, Urban Villages, can be designed around widely-accepted principles of sustainability i.e. clean and friendly environments with a reduced reliance on cars; environmental justice and social equity; and providing economic opportunities through local green business opportunities for residents of sustainable communities.

Comments: Curitiba, Brazil, a city that was beset with poverty, pollution and huge infrastructure challenges, is now the leading green city on the planet. It got to where it is today because it had a plan, leadership, and a dedicated team of “can do” creative people working to meet the needs of the community while preserving and enhancing the environment. If Curitiba can do it, Oakland can do it too!

For more information, please contact Kirstin Miller.

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